The interrogative - Easy Learning Grammar
Yes/no questions
Questions that expect the answer yes or no are called yes/no questions or sometimes, polar questions.The interrogative is used to form yes/no questions.The normal sentence order for the interrogative is: modal/auxiliary verb + subject + base form of the main verb.- Were the dogs barking?
- Have you been dieting?
- Can Mahmoud come too?
- Must you go so soon?
- Would you like a chocolate?
- Does he enjoy tennis?
- Do they play a lot?
- Did that surprise his mum?
- Doesn’t he like talking about his childhood?
- Can’t Peter have one too?
- Don’t you speak French?
- Wouldn’t you like to know a bit more about this?
- Does he not like talking about his childhood?
- Do you not want to know what it was about?
- Can Peter not have one too?
WH- questions
When you want to get a detailed answer, not just yes or no, you must use a WH- question (or ‘non-polar’ question), which allows for many possible answers. The words who, whom, whose, what, which, when, where, why, and how are used to form this sort of question. These words are referred to as WH- words. See WH- words.- Yes/no:
- Did you ring the school? – Yes, I did.
- Was she all right in the end? – No/I don’t know.
- Have you seen Ali yet? – Yes, I have.
- WH-:
- Who was that man? – He’s my geography teacher.
- What did he say when you told him the news? – He was too surprised to say anything.
- When did you see Ali? – Last Wednesday.
Where is Peter going? – To work. - When did they arrive? – Yesterday.
- Why have you stopped going running? – The doctor told me to.